Journal of Economic Methodology最新文献

{"title":"Economic methodology to preserve the past? Some reflections on <i>economic theories and their dueling interpretations</i>.","authors":"Catherine Herfeld","doi":"10.1080/1350178X.2024.2404187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178X.2024.2404187","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Methodological appraisal usually aims at a discourse that contributes to the improvement of knowledge production processes in economics. Attempts by economists, such as that by Gilboa et al. (2022. Economic theories and their dueling interpretations. <i>Journal of Economic Methodology</i>, 1-20) to engage in such a discourse are laudable and needed because they draw on field-specific expertise and experience from economic practice and thereby can steer such discourse into promising directions. However, while Gilboa et al. seem to share the ambition of doing economic methodology in the service of progress, their contribution is not sufficiently self-critical. Instead of seriously considering the diversity of contemporary modeling practices, their position commits them to an outdated view of economics and can be read as licensing the preservation of conceptual and theoretical elements of standard economics that the discipline has long been criticized for. As such, the authors miss out on fully reaching their own ambitions of a practice-based appraisal that pushes economists towards self-critical and forward-looking modeling.</p>","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":"31 4","pages":"249-264"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11776171/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143068632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Beyond uncertainty: reasoning with unknown possibilities (Elements in Decision Theory and Philosophy)","authors":"E. Piermont","doi":"10.1080/1350178x.2024.2376417","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178x.2024.2376417","url":null,"abstract":"Published in Journal of Economic Methodology (Ahead of Print, 2024)","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":"245 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141779243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Paternalism for rational agents","authors":"Kevin Leportier","doi":"10.1080/1350178x.2024.2346116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178x.2024.2346116","url":null,"abstract":"In the context of strategic interactions, individuals sometimes find themselves better off when they have fewer options. This mechanism is known under the name of ‘strategic commitment’, as it is u...","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":"2015 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140935406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Experimental approach to development economics: a review of issues and options","authors":"C. S. C. Sekhar, Namrata Thapa","doi":"10.1080/1350178x.2024.2341292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178x.2024.2341292","url":null,"abstract":"Randomized control trials (RCTs) are recognized as the preferred tool of analysis in modern development economics literature/research and policy evaluation. This may lead to methodologies, includin...","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140611811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Economic models and their flexible interpretations: a philosophy of science perspective","authors":"Jaakko Kuorikoski, Caterina Marchionni","doi":"10.1080/1350178x.2024.2336048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178x.2024.2336048","url":null,"abstract":"We mobilise contemporary philosophy of science to further clarify observations on economic modelling made by Gilboa et al. (2023). We adopt a normative stance towards these modelling practices to i...","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":"72 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140602824","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Equilibrium modeling in economics: a design-based defense","authors":"Armin W. Schulz","doi":"10.1080/1350178x.2024.2310214","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178x.2024.2310214","url":null,"abstract":"Several authors have recently argued that the excessive focus on equilibrium models in mainstream economic analysis prevents economists from providing accurate representations of the complex and dy...","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139903468","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"To change or not to change. The evolution of forecasting models at the Bank of England","authors":"Aurélien Goutsmedt, Francesco Sergi, Béatrice Cherrier, Juan Acosta, Clément Fontan, François Claveau","doi":"10.1080/1350178x.2024.2303113","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178x.2024.2303113","url":null,"abstract":"Why do policymakers and economists within a policymaking institution choose to throw away a model and to develop an alternative one? Why do they choose to stick to an existing model? This article c...","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2024-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139764344","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Good and bad justifications of analytical modelling","authors":"Robert Sugden","doi":"10.1080/1350178x.2023.2275584","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178x.2023.2275584","url":null,"abstract":"Gilboa, Postlewaite, Samuelson and Schmeidler (2022, Economic theories and their dueling interpretations. Journal of Economic Methodology, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178X.2022.2142270; henceforth GPSS) give a ‘sociological’ account of various ways in which economists claim to find value in ‘analytical’ models – i.e. models that investigate formal relationships between concepts without deriving substantive empirical or normative conclusions. In this paper, I argue that some of the claims that GPSS report economists as making are defensible, but that others are used in support of modelling strategies that have little or no scientific value.","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":"59 10","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136346981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The genetic lottery why DNA matters for social equality <b>The genetic lottery why DNA matters for social equality</b> , by Kathryn Paige Harden, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2021, 312 pp., $29.95/£25.00, ISBN: 9780691226705","authors":"Jonathan M. Kaplan","doi":"10.1080/1350178x.2023.2266666","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178x.2023.2266666","url":null,"abstract":"Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1 In human behavior genetics, heritability is usually calculated by comparing the similarity of monozygotic (identical) twins to that of dizygotic (“fraternal”) same-sex twins, under the assumption that such sets of twins will have experienced (roughly) the same developmental environments, and so any excess similarity in identical twins must be associated with their excess genetic similarity. For a critique of this methodology and the assumptions underlying it, see e.g. Joseph, Citation2014. While I am skeptical of the accuracy of heritability estimates in human behavioral traits (see Matthews & Turkheimer, Citation2022 for a review of some of the ways in which heritability estimates can be inaccurate), my own view is that the concept’s fundamental limitations usually make arguments about its accuracy moot (see Kaplan, Citation2006, for discussion).2 I want to note that I am not endorsing such a policy – while I would like to be in a society in which everyone remotely capable of doing so and with any desire to do so be able to attend and graduate from college without incurring unreasonable costs, I don’t think it is imperative that everyone capable of doing so in fact want to do so, and would hope that any reasonably just society would create / hold space (meaningful, well-paid work) for people for whom pursuing a college education was not attractive.3 Though again, Harden overstates her case. The evidence suggests that children who are more genetically similar to children who engage in early sexual behavior (within a particular social context, etc.) are also more likely to be similar in terms of adverse outcomes, but the move from there to “genes that accelerate reproductive development” is a stretch, at best.4 I resist citing this “paper” as doing so risks legitimizing it and the “journal” in which it appears – readers interested in reading this “paper” will I trust have no trouble locating it.","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":"53 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135141197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A contribution to scientific studies of norms in economics inspired by JN Keynes and popper","authors":"Sina Badiei","doi":"10.1080/1350178x.2023.2267075","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178x.2023.2267075","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThis paper defends JN Keynes’s argument that normative economics can be objective. It begins by exploring Keynes’s view on the positive/normative distinction in economics. After discussing its originality and advantages, the paper recognizes that the Keynesian distinction does not explain the exact nature of the relationship between positive and normative economics. Thus, it tries to improve Keynes’s position using Popper’s contributions to economics. It shows that for Popper, advances in normative social science are the main steppingstone to resolving disagreements over the choice of the norms underlying the reform of social situations. The final two parts of the paper draw on the contributions of Keynes and Popper to the study of norms to explain why normative economics can more easily approach objectivity by concentrating on highly delimited topics. The last part relies on Popper’s concept of avoidable unhappiness to offer one method of restraining the tasks of normative economics.KEYWORDS: Positive economicsnormative economicsnorms and valuesepistemology of economicsphilosophy of economicsbasic needs AcknowledgementI want to express my gratitude to John Davis, Wade Hands and Élodie Bertrand for their invaluable comments on previous versions of this paper, and the editors of INEM 2021 Special Issue, Malte Dold, Merve Bornazoglu and Tyler Desroches, for their help and consideration. Last but not least, I would like to acknowledge the immensely helpful comments and suggestions of two anonymous referees, which allowed me to improve the paper considerably. It goes without saying that I am responsible for any remaining shortcoming.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Hands (Citation2012) has argued in favor of distinguishing epistemic values that influence scientific work from non-epistemic norms that influence the actions of socio-economic agents in general (Citation2012, pp. 220–221). This article's focus is on non-epistemic, i.e., social and ethical norms, and it often follows Hands by distinguishing epistemic values from non-epistemic norms.2 Keynes's book is much more than a mere epistemological and methodological restatement of Marshall's economics, as proven by Marshall's not-very-enthusiastic comments on the book and Keynes's characterization of Marshall's views as ‘nearly always exaggerated on one side or the other’ (Deane, Citation2001, p. 138).3 For example, suppose we have a choice between two policies, A and B. Policy A allows the wealthiest person to gain the sum of x. After compensating the losers, he still gains the sum of y relative to the initial situation. Policy B allows the poorest person to gain the sum of x. After compensating the loser, who happens to be the richest person, she still gains the sum of y relative to the initial situation. Paretian welfare economics offers no guidance as to which of these policies should be adopted, leaving the decision to politician","PeriodicalId":46507,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Methodology","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135900873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}